“We engaged in a very experimental effort to turnout voters whom we identified as having patriotic beliefs but had not voted since 2009,” said Matt Braynard, LAA’s executive director. “We hit these people with a comprehensive package of direct mail, paid and volunteer phone calls, robocalls, social media ads, and door knocking to educate them on how and where to vote and why voting is so important.

“I knocked on many doors in the Northern Virginia area and met face-to-face with citizens who’d fallen into the cynical trap of believing their vote doesn’t matter. When the turnout data becomes available, we’ll be able to evaluate how effective our effort was so we can learn and adjust our efforts for future elections in other states.”

LAA’s poll monitoring operation received authorization from county boards of elections across the state to allow twenty-six volunteers to observe election day operations inside of polling places.

“Based on my own observations and the feedback from our poll watching team, I can say that, at least where we were present, the local election officials faithfully followed the lawful procedures,” said LAA’s Strategy Director Witold Chrabaszcz, who coordinated the operation. “We did observe a few occasions where polling staff could benefit from better education on the relatively recent voter ID laws. Nonetheless, they worked diligently to ensure the election laws were followed.”

“We’d like to thank the many volunteers who helped with our GOTV and poll monitoring effort,” said Braynard. “We’ll be announcing our next operation shortly and are counting on their help and the help of many more to make it a success.”